Democracy, Not the U.N., Brings Nuclear Disarmament

Ted Bromund / September 23, 2010

As expected, President Obama touched on one of his favorite subjects in his lengthy address to the United Nations General Assembly today: nuclear disarmament. He claimed that:

As we pursue the world’s most dangerous extremists, we’re also denying them the world’s most dangerous weapons, and pursuing the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.  Earlier this year, 47 nations embraced a work-plan to secure all vulnerable nuclear materials within four years. We have joined with Russia to sign the most comprehensive arms control treaty in decades. We have reduced the role of nuclear weapons in our security strategy. And here, at the United Nations, we came together to strengthen the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Like most of the rest of the President’s speech, this portion of it checks the expected boxes: a world without nuclear weapons (which will not happen, and which would endanger the security of the U.S. and its allies if it did); the security of nuclear materials (clearly an important goal, but one that cannot be achieved without cooperation from bad actors like Iran and North Korea); the New START Treaty (which among its other flaws limits U.S. missile defense options); a new national security strategy (which fails to make a clear commitment to defend the U.S. and its allies); and the NPT (where the U.S. has shot itself in the foot by assenting to the theory that, if non-proliferation fails, the U.S. must respond by disarming further). (more…)